


Lucky

by sunrise_and_death



Series: Reapers [1]
Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, M/M, Personification of Death, Reapers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-29
Updated: 2018-01-29
Packaged: 2019-03-11 02:49:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13515105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunrise_and_death/pseuds/sunrise_and_death
Summary: At thirteen, he’d lived in eleven different cities, gone by as many different names, and seen his reaper twenty-eight times. Some people would have called him lucky.





	Lucky

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by a Tumblr post that I've misplaced about how Neil's almost died so many times that he's probably friends with Death. This isn't quite as light and fluffy as that concept suggests. (If someone knows that post, please let me know so I can properly credit my inspiration.)
> 
> Also, multiple lines in this are pulled directly from the All for the Game books by Nora Sakavic. Credit to her for all those lines.

When Nathaniel first saw his reaper, he seemed as tall as the sky. It wasn’t until he was thirteen that he looked over and realized his reaper was the same height he was.

At thirteen, he’d lived in eleven different cities, gone by as many different names, and seen his reaper twenty-eight times.

Some people would have called him lucky.

 

* * *

 

Common knowledge about reapers was as follows:

1\. Your reaper could only be seen when you might die. This was not be confused with a near-death experience; a perfectly healthy person could see their reaper and have no idea why.

2\. Reapers could not be touched. They could not be caged or kept. They had no evident hierarchy, organization, or form of communication. They were a unexplainable fact of life. They did not speak.

3\. Your reaper took the appearance of the person who would mean the most to you in your life, at the time at which you would meet them. The reasons why were strongly debated.

Nathaniel Wesninski came to have a deeper understanding of his reaper than most. Many people counted themselves lucky if they saw their reaper just once before they actually died. Nathaniel had seen his so many times that he actually found its blank stare and quiet presence soothing.

After all, every time he saw it, he was reminded of the fact that he was going to live. Whoever’s face his reaper wore, he hadn’t met them yet.

 

* * *

 

At seven, he learned to stop mentioning his reaper to his mother. He understood why when he was ten and they were sneaking out of the house in the middle of the night with five million dollars in cash.

His mother had explained reapers to him when he was five, after his father hit him so hard that he flew across the room. “Your reaper looks like someone that will be very important to you someday,” his mother told him as she held ice to his swollen cheek. “What did yours look like?”

“Tall,” he answered. His reaper had appeared only seconds before he’d been hit, stepping into existence with apathetic nonchalance. “What does yours look like, Mama?”

Her lips thinned. “Your father,” she said shortly.

At ten, he realized important didn’t necessarily mean good.

 

* * *

 

Neil didn’t see his reaper for a while after becoming Neil Josten. Millport’s small-town charms didn’t leave much room for chances with death. The next time he saw his reaper, it wasn’t his reaper at all.

The headline “Ravens Rejected” ran above a picture of the expressionless face Neil knew so well. Neil traced it with his fingertips, before he carefully inserted it into his binder. What were the chances that his reaper's model would be an Exy player who had drawn the attention of both Riko Moriyama and Kevin Day? The picture it painted was clear. He considered not trying out for the Millport Exy team come fall.

Not long after, there was another newspaper with another picture and another headline: “From Fostered to Foxes.” Neil spent the night thinking of how his mother would have killed him if he'd dared to think about Exy again. The next day he ran striker drills until he could barely feel his arms.

A second article went into the binder which had previously been solely devoted to Riko and Kevin. A few months later, Neil Josten was given a place on Millport's meager lineup.

 

* * *

 

When he found out Andrew had a twin, Neil panicked for a moment. Then he took one look at Aaron’s face and could only see the ways in which it was unfamiliar, the different creases and curves. Aaron looked like he’d felt something, once. Neil’s reaper was utterly impassive.

 

* * *

 

By the time Neil was cutting out articles about Andrew and Kevin, he knew he was reaching the end of his time. Andrew looked like his reaper through and through, no further growing required; Neil even thought he recognized some of the clothes. So he shouldn’t have been surprised when he looked up after receiving a racquet to his gut and saw his reaper’s face, curved in an uncharacteristic smile.

“Fuck you,” Neil spat, because if he’d had it his way, he wouldn’t have met Andrew until he was old and about to die anyway. He didn’t want someone to be important to him, especially not a pint-sized, destructive goalie who didn’t even seem to care about Exy. He refused to let this person signal the end of him.

A silver lining: There wasn’t an ounce of recognition in those eyes. Maybe Andrew had never seen his reaper. Maybe his reaper wasn’t Neil. Who knew. But his cheerily medicated responses meant he had no clue what he would be to Neil.

It was a small blessing, but Neil took what he could get.

 

* * *

 

At the airport, Neil could immediately tell which twin had come to fetch him. Without the smile, this was Neil's reaper made flesh.

“Neil,” Andrew said, his form of greeting. “Baggage claim.”

Neil tapped his bag. “Just this.” He didn’t comment on the distinct absence of the side effects of Andrew's medication. He watched Andrew out of the corner of his eye and kept his cards close to his chest.

Later, when Kevin asked him how he’d known, Neil had an answer prepared that wasn’t anything about how Aaron and Andrew couldn’t have been easier for him to tell apart. Instead, he said, “They’re twins, but they’re not the same.”

After all, if he could tell Andrew and his reaper apart, Andrew and Aaron were a breeze.

 

* * *

 

As much as Neil tried to keep his gaze neutral whenever it turned to Andrew, it was nearly impossible. His eyes caught the black shades of Andrew’s clothing on the edges of his vision and he instantly tensed, too used to seeing that shape and knowing the situation was life and death.

Something must have bled through, because Andrew watched him with even greater suspicion as the days went on. Through Exy, Kevin’s mounting disapproval, and still more Exy, the weight of Andrew’s distrust was a constant.

When Neil came back to his dorm and found the tags of his clothes laid flat, he thought first of the small collection of articles regarding Andrew in the back two pages. Humiliation painted his cheeks an angry red as he picked the lock and stormed into the cousins’ and Kevin’s room.

“Put a leash on your pet monster or I will,” he told Kevin, lip curling around the French of _monstre_.

There was another side effect to seeing Andrew everywhere he turned. Whenever that sharp smile was turned on him, he found himself quietly missing the reassuringly emotionless presence of his reaper.

 

* * *

 

Neil thought he saw his reaper in Eden's Twilight, but the drugs made it hard to tell.

 

* * *

 

After Neil had told Andrew more than he'd ever told another person, Andrew tapped a finger against his left armband. "That explains your obsession with Kevin. Why am I in your little scrapbook of envy?"

Neil lied. "I wanted to know what he saw in you. Why he'd leave Riko and go to you."

Standing in front of him, Andrew's face was inscrutable. Neil couldn't tell whether or not he’d been believed. "And the way you stare at me?"

Neil cursed himself for being so obvious and told the closest thing to the truth. "You remind of someone else sometimes."

"Someone you were frightened of."

The opposite, actually. "In a way," Neil answered evasively.

Andrew didn't say anything after that. He let Neil stay and stopped watching him with violent suspicion. He appeared to stop watching Neil at all, but sometimes Neil still caught him looking at him like he was something to solve.

 

* * *

 

The first time Neil saw his reaper for sure after joining the Foxes was backstage after Kathy Ferdinand's train wreck of a show. It flickered into existence just before Riko threw him into the wall.

"I do not approve, Kevin," Riko said, but Neil was watching his reaper. After having known Andrew for a few months, its sober state was a bit of a shock. This must be what Andrew was like completely drug-free, this blank-faced apathy.

Neil could no longer take reassurance in the fact that he hadn't met Andrew, but he still felt tentatively safe. Andrew wasn't the most important person in his life. He wouldn't die at Riko's hands in the back hallway of an inane talkshow.

That knowledge made him bold. "Leave him alone," he said. He let Riko follow his increasingly frantic retreat and told himself he wasn't going to die.

There was a moment of disorientation when his reaper appeared in front of him. It took Neil a second to realize the spread arms and curled lips meant this was Andrew. His reaper leaned against the wall, unfazed. When Andrew pushed Neil behind him, Neil skirted around to stand by his reaper. Contrarily, the reaper flickered out of existence a second later.

 

* * *

 

Neil hadn't thought Andrew would gain any positive significance in his life. He remembered his mother's experience. Then Andrew made him a promise and pressed a key into his hand, and the whole world went a bit sideways.

 

* * *

 

With death came reapers and, for those who survived, discussion of reapers.

It was Nicky who brought it up after Seth’s overdose. "Who do you think he saw?" Nicky asked in a small voice during the drive back to Palmetto. "Do you think it was Allison?"

Neil counted to ten in his head in French. He did not look at Andrew.

"Probably saw his shitstick of a mother," Andrew volunteered, medication preventing him from sounding anything but gleeful.

Nicky shot him a wounded look. "Your reaper is supposed to be someone who means something to you. Seth's mom treated him like crap."

"No one ever said they had to mean anything good,” Andrew returned. Neil couldn't stop himself from looking over and winced when he caught Andrew’s gaze in the rearview mirror. Andrew's grin twisted even wider. "His mother made dear old Seth into the worthless human being he was. You can't get much more significant than that."

Neil's mother and father had made him into who he was. What _was_ more significant than that? He looked back out at landscape speeding by and tried counting in his strained Spanish. His legs ached to run.

 

* * *

 

With his initiation into the monsters, Neil gradually got used to seeing Andrew out of the corner of his eye. He became accustomed to the curve of his unnatural smile, the stark lines of his black armbands, the sing-song quality of his voice when he was mocking someone. By the time they sat across from each other, cell phones to their ears, Andrew was Andrew to Neil, no longer the shadowy imitation of his reaper.

When his reaper appeared in the locker room at the fall banquet, Neil thought it was Andrew for a second. Then Riko slammed him into the wall and Neil saw that the thing he’d taken for Andrew wasn’t smiling or pulling out his knives or keeping his promise. The reaper was as stone-faced as always.

The momentary confusion muddled him, making him too sluggish to immediately realize what Riko was telling him. He understood too slow that the threat that had loomed so large over his life was overshadowed by a much, much larger one.

When he finally did, Riko read it in his face and his voice. The nasty slant of his smile sharpened. “Learn your place,” he said. “I will never tolerate this level of disrespect from you again. Do you understand?

Andrew had given him a key and a phone, but he still wasn’t the most important person in Neil’s life. Neil wasn’t going to die yet. “Yeah,” he said with bravado. “I understand you’re a complete asshole.”

As Riko's expression warped even further, Neil wondered how much longer he was going to be able to keep tempting fate.

 

* * *

 

The answer came swiftly: Not long.

Grief painted Kevin's face even though Neil was still alive. They sat, the two of them, and held between them the knowledge that Neil wouldn't be there in another year.  
"Do you know who it is?" Kevin finally asked. He gestured jerkily with his left hand at nothing. "Your reaper."

Instinctively, Neil's eyes strayed to where Andrew was now running laps around the inner court, buoyed by the mania of his medication. "Kevin, what does he want?" he asked instead of answering. "What does he want that he'll risk so much to keep you here?”

Kevin was a long time in replying. "I made him a promise," he said. "He's waiting to see if I can keep it." He drew in a harsh breath. "Neil, is Andrew—"

Neil walked away before he could finish his question.

 

* * *

 

It seemed almost cruel that Neil's reaper did not appear in the guest bedroom of Luther and Maria Hemmick's house. There was no danger to Neil; it was Andrew that he'd carelessly placed in harm's way.

From the glazed way Aaron stared at the empty space behind Drake Spear's fallen body, Neil was the only person in the room whose reaper had not appeared.

Andrew's hands were wrapped around the headboard and he was laughing. "Leaving now that the show's over?" he asked, head twisted to the side to watch something no one else could see. Neil's stomach churned, thinking of Andrew's reaper watching what had happened with icy impassivity. He grabbed the sheets, yanking them from under Drake's body, and draped them over Andrew's body.

"Hey," he said. "Andrew. Andrew."

Andrew blinked at him. "Didn't you disappear?"

There wasn't time to ask what Andrew meant. But when Neil's hand slid across the neat lines marking Andrew's wrists, he thought maybe his former conclusion was wrong; Andrew was just as familiar with his reaper as Neil was.

 

* * *

 

As Riko buried knives under his skin, Neil stared blearily at his reaper and thought about Andrew's. Had Andrew resented it for standing by as Drake touched him? Did he hate it? Or had he found it comforting, the way Neil did as Riko's knife bit into him? He stared at his reaper and remembered what he was doing this for.

 

* * *

 

Neil pressed his keys into his palm as they waited for Andrew to emerge from Easthaven. He nearly dropped them when Andrew did.

Neil's reaper had been by his side for most of what he remembered of the three weeks at Evermore. He struggled not to flinch back as he looked at Andrew's expressionless face.

Neil was going to die very, very soon. But he'd already known that.

 

* * *

 

On the roof, Neil thought about asking. He opened his mouth and then closed it again. "I heard you," he tried. "When you spoke to your reaper."

Andrew looked at him. "Are we playing a round?" he asked.

Neil thought about telling Andrew what his own reaper looked like. _You're going to be the most important person to me_ , he'd be saying. _You might already be_.

He shook his head and let the topic drop.

 

* * *

 

He’d spent about half of a year trying to figure out what would make Andrew so significant to him.

At first, he’d thought Andrew might be the one to finally bring his running to an end, either through alerting his father to his whereabouts or by dispensing with Neil himself. Instead, Andrew had made him a deal and handed him a set of keys.

For a while, Neil had thought that might be it; his life was so barren of meaning that maybe all it took was giving him a place to call home to earn the spot as his reaper. But he had still ranked his mother and father’s influence higher—and if that were the case, then there might have been a good chance of Kevin being his reaper as well, which Neil flatly rejected.

Then he’d imagined it was all the truths they gave each other, the careful web of trust they built. And maybe that was a part of it. Neil was more real with Andrew than he was with anyone else; he rested his burdens on Andrew’s shoulders and Andrew bore them with something that wasn’t quite grace but was a thousand times more reliable. Neil liked that Andrew was an unmovable force in his life, solid and steady and strong.

But maybe it was something much simpler, he realized as Andrew kissed him as they sat on the rooftop and burned through Neil’s entire world with one action. Maybe it was just—this. Maybe all along Neil’s reaper had been a manifestation of the most classic of human emotions. Not fear or rage or comfort, but—

“Tell me no,” Andrew told him. Neil couldn’t have said a word if he tried.

He’d never felt this way before. Apparently, he never would again.

 

* * *

 

He knew what the countdown was as soon as it appeared. Not the details—who was sending it, why they were sending it, what would ultimately happen—but the most important thing.

Neil Josten’s days were literally numbered.

His reaper failed to appear for the longest stretch of time since Millport. Neil imagined he was biding his time. He’d put in his final appearance soon enough.

It was too bad Neil wouldn’t make to finals; he hated to think of the Foxes having to drop out because of him. They would all be upset, disappointed, but he thought they would recover in time. The Foxes were resilient.

Andrew, he thought, would be fine. What they had was nothing; Andrew would bounce back from his death quickly. But only if Neil could convince him to break their deal.

He would make sure to end it before the countdown reached its grand finale. He knew how seriously Andrew took his deals.

 

* * *

 

It took until the very last day, but Neil did it.

 

* * *

 

It was late when the game ended. For a blissful half-hour, Neil thought it would all end up coming to nothing. Then his phone rang and his reaper slipped into sight.

As always, the reaper was a perfect mirror image. But now, Neil knew what that hair felt like between his fingers, the way the muscles moved under those shoulders, the feel of those lips against his own. And he thought he knew why reapers took the form of the most significant person in someone’s life. It was what you were leaving behind.

“Hello?” he answered.

 

* * *

 

After he hung up with Lola, he looked at his reaper again. “You’ll stay with me?” he whispered. He didn’t mean for it to be a question, but fear transformed it. “You’ll stay with me the whole time?”

With the slightest of movements, his reaper nodded.

Reapers did not communicate. Something bittersweet filled Neil’s chest.

“Thank you,” he said.

 

* * *

 

“Thank you,” he told Andrew, feeling the presence of his reaper behind him. “You were amazing.”

 

* * *

 

His reaper was there in the car.

His reaper was there in the trunk.

His reaper was there in the basement.

His reaper was there when his uncle put a bullet through his father’s head.

His reaper was there on the front lawn.

“Am I still going to die now?” Neil asked, dizzy with blood loss.

His reaper shook its head.

“Will you still stay?” Neil asked. Sirens sounded as the FBI swarmed the scene.

His reaper nodded.

 

* * *

 

The reaper hovered by his side while he was in the hospital bed and sat beside him in the car on the way to the Foxes. It didn’t look at Neil or anything else in particular. That was the only flaw in its imitation; Andrew’s eyes were never that glazed and unseeing. Still, it was all that Neil had wanted to look at for hours.

When Andrew barreled into the motel room teeth bared and fists flying that Neil remembered how pale a shade his reaper was.

The real Andrew—fiercely angry and still as utterly solid as ever—was so compelling that Neil forgot about his reaper for a few minutes. It was only when the FBI began arguing with the Foxes that he looked up to see it standing over him.

“Oh,” he said. It looked straight down at him with eyes a flatter brown than Andrew’s. “I think I’m safe now. You don’t have to stay anymore.”

The Foxes and FBI fell silent. Andrew’s hand on the back on Neil’s neck tightened. “What are you talking to?” he asked.

“My reaper,” Neil answered, not looking away. His reaper crouched down in front of him, almost like it was examining him. “Thank you,” Neil said again. “Thank you for staying. You don’t have to anymore.”

Someone else was speaking, but Neil ignored them. His reaper looked at him a moment longer and nodded. Then it leaned forward and brushed its lips over the burns on Neil’s cheek.

Neil had felt a lot of pain. Cuts, burns, gunshots. That wasn’t what the reaper felt like, but it also was. Neil had felt Andrew kiss him, Andrew’s hands cradling his face, Andrew’s chest pressed up against his. That wasn’t what the reaper felt like, but it also was. Neil had felt rain on his face, wax on his skin, the wind in his hair, ice on his tongue. That wasn’t what the reaper felt like, but it also was.

Neil had felt a corpse. That was the closest to what the reaper felt like, but it wasn’t like that at all.

He reeled back, instinctively pressing his hands to his cheek, and the reaper was gone.

Andrew’s hands immediately peeled his away. Dimly, Neil noted that the pain from those burns were gone, although his hands still throbbed and the gashes on his other cheek protested any movement of his face.

“What just happened?” Andrew asked, staring at Neil’s face. The FBI agents behind him made noises of disbelief.

Neil wouldn’t see it himself until later, but there was no hint of what Lola and a dashboard lighter had done to Neil’s face. The swirls of melted skin had disappeared. In their place there was the slightest scar, pale and raised. When the light hit it just right, it almost looked like a pair of lips.

 

* * *

 

The FBI tried to get Neil to explain, but he bartered his information for their silence on the issue. They were too spooked to argue further.

Andrew didn’t say a word about it all through the interrogations. In fact, Andrew didn’t say a word. Neil would have worried if he wasn’t so exhausted.

It wasn’t until much later, after they’d been freed from the FBI’s custody, after they went back home to Palmetto, after Neil had explained everything else to the rest of the Foxes that it was even brought up again.

“What happened?” Allison asked. “With your reaper?”

Neil didn’t let his eyes stray to Andrew. “I just asked it to stay after my uncle left. And it did.”

“But, uh…” Matt gestured at his face. “Clearly, something else happened.”

“It touched me,” Neil said. It wasn’t a lie. “I think it was saying goodbye.”

No one commented that reapers did not touch people or say goodbye, but Neil could hear them thinking it. He sighed and pressed his bandaged fingers to his legs. “I can’t remember how many times I’ve seen my reaper,” he told them. “I saw it the first time when I was five. The longest time I went without seeing it were the eight months in Millport. It used to comfort me, because I hadn’t met the person it looked like yet. And then it comforted me because I had. I asked it to stay because I thought I was going to die. I think it might have thought that too.”

Everyone was quiet after that.

Finally, Renee said, “I’m glad that you had someone there.”

Neil did not want to imagine having to go through that alone. He glanced over at Andrew. “Me too,” he said.

 

* * *

 

It was in their bed at the cabin that he finally brought it up. “There’s something I want to tell you,” he said. He knew Andrew was still awake on the other side and he let his words float in the room’s semidarkness. “It’s about my reaper.”

Andrew rolled over. His hair was haphazard and his eyes half-lidded. “Are we playing a round?” he asked.

“If you’re okay with me choosing what truth I give.”

“You’re going to answer the question I would ask anyway,” Andrew said. “Who does your reaper look like?”

Even knowing that Andrew had likely guessed the answer, Neil felt oddly vulnerable as he answered. “You,” he said. “The day you picked me up at the airport.”

Andrew narrowed his eyes. “That isn’t when we met.”

“Isn’t it?” Neil asked. He remembered the Andrew he’d met in Millport and the smile that had shown all his teeth. “You know reapers have to follow certain rules, right?”

“You’re not funny.”

Neil hid a smile in his pillow. “Who does your reaper look like?”

“You,” Andrew said. “The day I got out of Easthaven. Reapers aren’t supposed to look like they just went ten rounds with a brick wall and the wall won, you know.”

Neil propped himself up on his elbow, feeling overwhelmingly giddy. “That definitely isn’t when we met.”

Andrew tugged lightly on a strand of Neil’s hair. “Isn’t it?”

 

* * *

 

Neil got the feeling he wouldn’t see his reaper again for a long time. When he told Andrew this, Andrew snorted. “You’re not that lucky,” he said.

Sure enough, Neil glimpsed his reaper during their final game as Riko raised his racquet and went to swing at Neil’s head. He kept his eyes on it as Andrew broke Riko’s arm and the Foxes swarmed him. With two weary fingers, he saluted it.

The reaper tapped two fingers to its temple in response. And then it was gone.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on [Tumblr](http://sunrise-and-death.tumblr.com).


End file.
